Chapter 9

Briony's POV

Bettina didn't have an answer for the flare. She checked my palm three times over, pressed two fingers to my wrist like she was counting a heartbeat that had nothing to do with my pulse, and finally just shook her head.

"No wound. No danger anywhere near you." She said it more to herself than to me. "That shouldn't happen."

"Well, it did."

"I know it did." She didn't sound angry, just tired in a way that scared me more than anger would have. "Keep track of it. If it happens again, I want to know exactly what you were doing, what you were thinking about, everything. No detail's too small."

I promised her I would, same as the night before, and went about the rest of my morning with my palm feeling like it belonged to somebody else.

By midday the pack's mood had shifted, and not in a direction I liked. It wasn't loud about it. Nobody said anything straight to my face. It was smaller than that, a woman pulling her son closer when I walked past the training yard, two warriors going quiet the second I stepped into the mess hall, a stare held a beat too long before somebody looked away like they'd been caught at something.

Sage noticed it too. She fell into step beside me on my way back from the well, jaw tight in a way I recognized.

"You seeing this?" she asked.

"Hard to miss."

"It's not the same as before." She glanced sideways at a cluster of pack members who stopped talking the second we got close. "Before it was 'the spare, the breeder,' same old stuff. This feels different."

"You think it's Petra."

"I know it's Petra." Sage's voice dropped lower. "Rowan caught her yesterday telling half the kitchen staff that the ash-root story doesn't add up, that maybe somebody should ask Bettina to explain the recipe out loud in front of the council. Didn't say your name."

My stomach turned over. "She's fishing. Seeing who bites."

"Seeing who's scared enough of you to want you gone, more like."

We kept walking, and I didn't have anything to say to that, because she wasn't wrong.

Kieran sent me to the border market that afternoon with Sage as escort, mostly because Bettina needed supplies we couldn't grow this far north and mostly, I suspected, because he wanted me somewhere he could account for while the whispering settled down at home. I didn't argue. A few hours away from pack eyes sounded better than staying put.

The market sat right where Ashvale land met open trade ground, stalls packed close, smells of smoked meat and dried spice thick enough to taste. Traders came through from half a dozen packs out here, none of them wearing colors, everybody minding their own business by unspoken rule.

Sage haggled over a bundle of dried root while I wandered two stalls down, checking a jar of something Bettina had circled twice in her notes. That's when I saw her.

Petra. Standing near the edge of the market where the stalls thinned out, half-turned away like she didn't want to be noticed, talking low and fast to a man I didn't recognize.

I almost kept walking. I almost told myself it was nothing, that plenty of Ashvale wolves came through here to trade on their own time. Except something about the way she stood, shoulders tight, eyes flicking around the crowd every few seconds, that made me stop and actually look.

The man wasn't dressed like a trader. No goods on him, no cart, nothing to sell or buy. He stood too still, the way you stand when you're waiting for something specific instead of browsing.

And when the wind shifted, I caught it, faint, but there. He didn't smell like Ashvale. Didn't smell like any pack scent I recognized from the market crowd around him either. Something colder. Something that was wrong.

Petra reached into her coat and pulled out a folded scrap of paper.

I froze where I stood, half-hidden behind a stall of hanging herbs, watching her press it into his palm quickly and practiced, like she'd done it before and knew exactly how not to be seen doing it. He closed his fist around it without a word, tucked it away inside his jacket, and turned to disappear back into the crowd before I could get a clear look at his face.

Petra straightened, smoothed her coat down like nothing had happened, and turned to walk back toward the Ashvale stalls.

That's when she saw me.

Her whole body went still for half a second, just long enough that I knew she knew exactly what I just watched. Then the stillness melted into something easy, almost friendly, and she crossed the distance between us like we were old friends running into each other by chance.

"Fancy seeing you out here." Her voice was light, casual, nothing like the sharp edge she used on me in the herb stores. "Didn't take you for a market day kind of girl."

"Who was that?" I kept my voice even, refusing to give her the satisfaction of hearing it shake.

"Who was who?"

"The man. The note."

Petra's smile didn't move an inch. "You must be seeing things. Been under a lot of stress lately, hasn't it? The whole burning-people-back-to-life thing." She said it soft enough that nobody nearby could've heard it as anything but small talk. "Wouldn't blame you for imagining things that aren't there."

"I know what I saw."

"Do you?" She tilted her head, studying me the same way she had in the herb stores, weighing something behind her eyes. "Careful who you say that to, sweetheart. Accusations without proof have a way of making the accuser look worse than the accused."

She walked past me before I could answer, disappearing into the crowd toward the Ashvale stalls like she hadn't just handed a stranger something she clearly didn't want anyone to see.

I stood there with my heart hammering, staring at the spot where the man had vanished, trying to decide if I just watched something small or something that was about to blow everything apart.